Ulyanovsk and Baghdad signed the memorandum of mutual understanding in the literature field

01 August 2016, 18:05271

The signing took place during the visit of Sadek Mohamed, the chief of the " Baghdad - City of Literature" program. He was in Ulyanovsk from 28th till 30th of July and had several meetings with the city government and representatives of cultural institutions and he also took part in the "LiteraTour on the tram" project.

Baghdad is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field "literature" since 2015, the same as Ulyanovsk. However, the Baghdad's goal differs from other Cities of Literature. Its representatives use culture as a recourse to restore peace in their country. Persistent wars affect on the creativity of the local community where Sadek Mohamed is a talented poet and translator of the poetic works.

Citizens of our city could get acquainted with his works last Thursday in the Pushkin children's library № 24. The meeting was conducted in English language. The participants of the meetings were local writers and poets, some of them got so interested in the works of Iraqi poet that they decided to translate some of his works into Russian language. Now the " Baghdad - City of Literature" and the " Ulyanovsk - City of Literature" program offices discuss the initiative to publish a trilingual poetic ontology of works by Baghdad and Ulyanovsk poets in Russian, Arabic and English languages.

Other arrangements for cooperation were reached on the Sadek Mohamed's meeting with Olga Mezina, the Head of the City Council, Elena Toporkova, the Chief of the Department for Culture, City Administration of Ulyanovsk and managers of the " Ulyanovsk - City of Literature" program office. The meeting took place on July 29.

"I hope our meeting will become a great reason for our successful cooperation and we will have a lot wonderful collaborative projects in the future. Beforehand, we need to create conditions to help Ulyanovsk and Baghdad citizens to get acquainted with cultures of our countries. This bodes well for stronger partnership and friendship. And in this case we have a lot to share with Baghdad ", - Olga Mezina noticed.

There was an opportunity to exchange the specific proposals for partnership on the meeting. For example, in November Baghdad will organize a great literary event dedicated to one of the oldest streets of the city, and Baghdad invites a creative group from Ulyanovsk to take part in it. In return, Ulyanovsk expressed its willingness to provide the "Scarlet flower" exhibition, created by citizens of the city, for the exposure in Baghdad next year.

"When I came here, I was impressed by the city, it is modern and clean. You can feel that the administration of the city takes care of Ulyanovsk. And I would like to congratulate all citizens of Ulyanovsk with entering the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. I am very glad that we gave rise to our partnership and I am sure that you will see a lot of literary figures from Baghdad in Ulyanovsk very soon, and Ulyanovsk representatives will visit Baghdad as well. The Russian culture isn't foreign for Iraq representatives and it is an amazing opportunity to get know more about Russia", - , the chief of the " Baghdad - City of Literature" program said.

Moreover, Sadek Mohamed visited the V.I. Lenin regional scientific library and the I.A. Goncharov historical-memorial centre- museum. During the meetings arrangements for transfer of the small Arabic book collection to the foreign department of the library were reached. Also the participation of the literary figures from Baghdad in the I.A. Goncharov international conferences in Ulyanovsk was discussed. All possible ways of cooperation were fixed in the memorandum of mutual understanding in the literature field by the " Baghdad - City of Literature" and the " Ulyanovsk - City of Literature" program offices.

Let us recall that the " Ulyanovsk - City of Literature" program office is realized under the Ulyanovsk City Administration in the partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Foundation "Ulyanovsk - the Capital of Culture".